Satnav shootout ... who will get home quicker?

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BTB 500

BTB 500

MB Club Veteran
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Joined
Aug 7, 2005
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Location
Shropshire
Car
R129 SL500, W639 Vito 120, S205 C300
Late Sunday afternoon. Pouring rain. A field near the New Forest. An S203 with COMAND sets off for the 60 mile drive home with Mrs BTB at the controls. Five minutes later I leave in the Vito, guidance courtesy of TomTom.

I got back 30 mins before she did :thumb: :bannana:
 
perhaps Mrs BTB drives slowly and stopped for tea :)
 
Try Waze.... always the quickest route :thumb:
 
I have had several TomTom units and they are pretty good.

That said I still prefer built in units.

Not sure about routes but when in France I had both units running as the address I was going to was stored in the TomTom unit.

Pretty much gave the same route, the built in unit definitely holds on to the satellites better and lock on quicker.

Every TomTom I have owned needs a periodic reset on bottom of unit.

Still it's a personal thing and some do prefer mobile units.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
I find my TomTom is more efficient than the built-in system but not as polite when giving instructions: never says "please". :D
 
Visited my daughter in Oosterhaut, Holland and set my 2 sat navs to come home, just to see if they would take me the same way. Well, end of first road, one said turn left and yep, the other said turn right :dk: One was Comand, the other a Garmin, I ignored both and "did it my way" :D:D
 
I guess later COMAND systems will perform better - the one in our S203 only has TMC for traffic data. So perhaps not fair comparing it to a much newer TomTom with HD Traffic.
 
markjay said:
Try Waze.... always the quickest route :thumb:
Click to expand...

But I think it uses mobile data all the time, so depends a bit on your phone tariff. Also my TomTom has a 6" screen - my phone is only 5.2" :D
 
Headhurts said:
I have had several TomTom units and they are pretty good.

That said I still prefer built in units.

Not sure about routes but when in France I had both units running as the address I was going to was stored in the TomTom unit.

Pretty much gave the same route, the built in unit definitely holds on to the satellites better and lock on quicker.

Every TomTom I have owned needs a periodic reset on bottom of unit.

Still it's a personal thing and some do prefer mobile units.
Click to expand...

Touch wood I don't think I've ever had to reset a TomTom. The newer ones have much stronger GPS reception, and no longer have a socket for an optional external antenna (I used to have a magnetic one that went on the roof :D).

No dispute about the look and convenience of built in systems though.
 
I tend only to use the nav on long journeys. 99% of them are with the missus. I use the Comand for the general route and google maps on the missus phone for live traffic and route planning - basically I say "have a look at the traffic down that way and if she says fine we go there.
 
I went from Kent to Ancona in Italy using both a BMW e53 built in unit alongside a Tom Tom 720. They disagreed for about 100 metres in the motorway just as we were coming into Milan. One wanted to take me off and on at a junction.

Perhaps the e53 nav is better than the Merc but I doubt it.
 
I really think it depends which Nav system has routing algorithms that match your driving style.
I find Garmin useless, Tom Tom much better and obviously Waze the best as that is all based on live data.
 
I just use google maps on the smart phone. Much better than mercs offering.
 
On last year's Alpine trip to Lake Garda, I took 2 Tom Toms ( because I could)

Each day, they gave different directions....
 
Driving back from Heathrow on Monday afternoon my COMAND showed lots of red crosses on the A15 near my home, exactly where there have been lots of problems over the last few weeks with roadworks. So I thanked the lady who lives in my dashboard and followed her directions to circumnavigate the congestion, only adding five minutes to my journey.

A couple of days later when I left home there were the same red crosses showing on the same stretch of A15. It wasn't convenient for me to avoid it completely so I found my own way around back roads up to near the end of the marked congestion. There was nothing there! The road was almost empty but the red crosses were still on the screen. Either it had just cleared or I'd been lied to.

But I'm still not going to ignore any future marked hold-ups - I once thought I knew better and ignored COMAND's advice, only to regret it.
 
The only thing I had with the latest Tom Tom units was not being able to zoom out properly when trying to decide which way to go, it kept zooming back in. This has probably been long since fixed, but it ruined an otherwise really good nav unit for me.
I guess I starting using Waze and find it just works so stuck with it.
I love the way it will take you down small streets across London that other Nav systems simply never had before, maybe they all do this now?
 
It's all about live traffic feeds.

With all due respect to those lovely integrated Comand units, early ones are only using maps, and later ones, like the one on my 2007 W221, are only using rudimentary traffic data feeds.

And that's a big difference on a Sunday night.

If I'm driving more than an hour, or using the Magic Roundabout anywhere near Heathrow or Dartford, I always double check against my Iphone feed before setting off.

Even when actually on the way, an Iphone is better, in that it will tell you when an accident has happened and update you if one route becomes faster than another.

Integrated systems are great, but they can't match the pace of mobile technology, unless you tether the phone to your car. I'll leave it to others to argue the benefits of Apple / Google / Waze maps on Iphone etc.
 
Waze is Google isn't it? I thought Waze was their dedicated Sat Nav app?

You have to remember as well that many in built systems also now use RTTI as well. I guess many are comparing their phone which is updated weekly with a system that may have first come out 10 years ago.
 
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